Upgrade to XP Professional (JSF)

[Joseph Ferraro]

I just recently purchased an HP ZD8000 (8115) laptop which came preinstalled
with Windows XP Home. I want to upgrade it to XP Professional, but I am
concerned that there may be some issues with hardware etc.

Does anyone know of any issues or concerns that may exist?

Thanks in advance

Joe Ferraro

 

[gordon]

I just recently purchased an HP ZD8000 (8115) laptop which came preinstalled
with Windows XP Home. I want to upgrade it to XP Professional, but I am
concerned that there may be some issues with hardware etc.

Does anyone know of any issues or concerns that may exist?

Thanks in advance

Joe Ferraro

XP Home is EXACTLY the same as XP Pro with the exception of Pro having
some extra security and networking functions so there should be
absolutely NO issues with hardware at all.

But have you thought about this? You only NEED to upgrade to pro if you
need to join a domain, otherwise you might as well save your money!

 

[Tom Porterfield]

I just recently purchased an HP ZD8000 (8115) laptop which came preinstalled
with Windows XP Home. I want to upgrade it to XP Professional, but I am
concerned that there may be some issues with hardware etc.

Does anyone know of any issues or concerns that may exist?

The hardware requirements for Home and Pro are identical. What features
in Pro are you needing?
--
Tom Porterfield
MS-MVP Windows
http://support.telop.org

Please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup only.

 

[Danny Sanders]

You might want to check with HP to see if you can.

Had a Sony with XP home that you had to buy the upgrade to professional from
Sony. A retail upgrade wouldn't work.

hth
DDS W 2k MVP MCSE

 

[Ron Martell]

I just recently purchased an HP ZD8000 (8115) laptop which came preinstalled
with Windows XP Home. I want to upgrade it to XP Professional, but I am
concerned that there may be some issues with hardware etc.

Does anyone know of any issues or concerns that may exist?

Thanks in advance

Joe Ferraro

If you were to attempt a *clean install* of XP Pro on your laptop then
you might experience some driver related issues and you would have to
download the proper drivers from the HP website. Best idea would be
to download these ahead of time and have them available on a CD during
the install.

If you were to *upgrade* the installed XP Home to XP Pro then there
would not be any such issue as the drivers would already be there.

Note that if you do upgrade from Home to Pro then your HP warranty
would possibly be rendered null and void. You might want to check
this out before proceeding.

And you should ensure that you have an actual or anticipated future
need for one of the features or functions that are found in XP Pro but
which are not included with XP Home. Other than these specific items
the two versions are identical and they are both produced from the
same source code base. In particular there is zero difference in
performance or stability between the two versions.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm

 

[Ken Blake]

I just recently purchased an HP ZD8000 (8115) laptop which came
preinstalled with Windows XP Home. I want to upgrade it to XP
Professional, but I am concerned that there may be some issues with
hardware etc.
Does anyone know of any issues or concerns that may exist?

No, there are no such issues. You can upgrade XP Home to Professional
without a problem. There is no special upgrade version just for this, but
the regular XP Professional Upgrade works fine (although it doesn't say so
on the box). Note that an OEM XP Professional CD will *not* do an upgrade.

But are you sure you want to do this? Are you aware that XP Home and
Professional are identical except that Professional includes a few features
(mostly related to security and networking) missing from Home? Most home
users (even most of those with home networks) don't need and would never use
these extra features and will see no benefits by upgrading.

Also note that if you do the upgrade, there are no guarantees that it always
works perfectly. However unlikely, it's always possible that something might
go wrong. For that reason it's prudent to be sure you have a backup of
anything you can't afford to lose before beginning.

 

[I D]

You can order the Win XP CD from HP Parts.

HP part # 358214 - 001. $49 US + shipping and sales tax.

Note: No product key is included with the CD as it is BIOS locked to the
ZD8000 series and not needed for a clean install from the CD. This is a
chance
to partition the HD, and will get rid of all the preinstalled junk. You can
then
reinstall all the drivers, and stuff you really want from the Application
and
Drivers DVD. It is menu driven so you can select what you need. A product
key
will be stored in the registry during the install.

A wealth of info on the ZD8000 series can be found at: www.zd7000forums.com

 

[Joseph Ferraro]

Thanks for the input, you have all basically talked me into staying with XP
home - the only feature that I was actually interested in is not that
important. XP professional has the ability to share entire directories and
subdirectories without going through the annoyance of doing it directory by
directory in XP Home.

Again, thanks for the input.